1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to covering plates for reinforcing steel pipe piles used in forming concrete foundations. The piles are driven to compact the ground in the construction of buildings, bridges, and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, the compaction of the ground is required to increase the strength of soft ground when constructing bridges and buildings. Compaction may be accomplished by general driving (rubbles, sand, long cornerstones, prestress, etc), pile driving (wood piles, ready-mix concrete, prestress concrete piles, etc), and deep foundation driving (well foundation, submerged foundation, etc).
Covering plate assemblies for the upper ends of steel pipe piles are used to support loads of upper base structures when driving steel pipe piles.
The structure of a known covering plate assembly is shown in FIG. 1. This known covering plate assembly 10 comprises a bottom plate 11 with a cross reinforced plate 12 welded to the lower side of plate 11 that, in turn, covers the upper side of a steel pipe pile 100 embedded into and protruding out of the ground. A plurality of iron reinforcing rods 20 are evenly spaced and welded around the periphery of plate 11. The upper ends of reinforcing rods 20 are bent outwardly to easily bind them with other iron reinforcing rods.
However, the covering plate assembly 10 requires that a reinforced plate 12 is secured on the lower side of a bottom plate 11. Plate 12 has to be cut, bent and produced at the construction site and then be welded to plate 11. The iron reinforcing rods and bottom plate 11 are butt-welded with round sections. Since each attaching section is short, this results in poor tension loading for an installed foundation base.